Kristine Palmieri (Berlin/Chicago): Philology as a Calling

Scholarship, Pedagogy, and the 'Science' of Altertumswissenschaft


wann: Donnerstag, 07.02.2018, 16-18 Uhr

wo: Historicum, Schellingstr. 12, Raum K026

Vortrag im Rahmen des Oberseminars "Perspektiven der Wissenschaftsgeschichte"

Philology became queen of the sciences in Germany during the early Nineteenth-Century. Classical philology, in particular, came to possess a level of cultural prestige and a degree of institutional power far exceeding those of the natural sciences. But why was philology so important? And what exactly did it mean to be a philologist? This talk answers these questions through an analysis of philology seminars at German universities prior to 1830 and, in so doing, illuminates the entangled relationship between scholarship and pedagogy in the history of philology. It also argues that a more comprehensive examination of what philology seminars were and the ways in which they operated has much to contribute to ongoing discussions about intersections between the hard sciences and the humanities.